What is the Meaning of Time?

It's been a while. Or so the numbers say. The ones that mean the date, that's what day it is all over the world. And the numbers say it's been a while, for me, at least. I write a lot. I write here about the things in my head and in my heart. I write on my pads about daily things like grocery lists and notes to the teachers. I write in my binders, each a different story, one that is all the little stories. I write in my notebooks a little bit of everything which then get thrown away, stuffed into a pocket, sent off to school, or filed in a binder. I write a lot. Different people write different things and I write a lot of different things.

But not recently. Recently I haven't written any stories, have been scattered about my lists and forgot two important teacher notes. (I had to make phone calls for those.) Sometimes I choose to stop writing. I say, "I am NOT a writer!" in this big, puffed up voice and then I proceed to stop writing stories and stop talking in my computer groups. Sometimes I even stop writing here. But there are always lists and letters and emails and the stories that I write all the while pretending I'm not really writing them. Or knowing I'm writing them but holding on to the idea that just because I am writing them doesn't make me a writer.

But not recently. No stories, no notes, no letters, almost no emails, mandatory group stuff only. I wrote a rather detailed homework assignment for SmudgedInk but I just copied it from my binder ("Jenn's Writer's Notebook", "Ideas" tab, 6th paper). I just haven't written.

It's strange that I haven't written because all sorts of things have been going on in my head and in my world. Normally there would have been 2 or 3 posts a day with this stuff. But the words don't seem to be presenting themselves and even this post feels oddly out of place. All of me feels oddly out of place though so perhaps that is it.

My point is, it's been a while. It's a matter of TIME. Not - "I don't have the TIME to write a post!" but rather the entire concept of it. It seems to have stopped being linear. There is a great Doctor Who quote about that. Something about wibbly-wobbly I think. Maybe I'll look it up. Maybe I won't. At any rate, I remember now things that have happened tomorrow. And later on, I will remember things that happened earlier. Sometimes I know things that are happening now. And all of it kind of scrunches up together like a knotted ball of yarn.

This coming week will be interesting. I have the week off. This means Baby won't be here. It feels like I have the week off and I can remember tomorrow morning after I get back from errands after dropping the kids off to school, standing in the kitchen thinking, "I have the day off today." It's a rather strange thing for me to have thought because I still have kids to get to and from school, errands to run, bills to pay, appointments to keep, Mom's Taxi to run, clothes to wash, rooms to clean and all the millions of things that have to be done all of the time. And yet the whole of the week has been encompassed by the thought that "I have the week off."

I could read one of my books. Or watch a movie. Or go shopping alone. Or sleep. Or write a novel. Or play a video game. Or gather everyone in my head together and write down what they have to say. Or go swimming. Or talk to the cats. Or take a bubble bath. I could do anything because "I have the week off."

One week. Does it take a week to take a bubble bath? Or write a novel? Or clean a house? Does it take an hour to cook a meal or read a book or do the dishes? Can I take a nap in one week? Pay the bills in one day? It's this TIME thing again...

I want to write about the price of freedom. Not war. I hate war - don't understand it, have no feeling of connection to it. I mean the freedom to speak what I want without the censors. And the horrible feeling this is creating. Who would ever have thought that a jail cell could be the safest place in the world - or in my head actually, but that doesn't fit the metaphor. Maybe I will do that this week. Can I write a post on freedom of speech in one week?

What is the meaning of TIME anyways?